Professor Mark Taylor

Chair in Parasitology

Professor Mark Taylor is Head of the Department of Tropical Disease Biology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Director of the A-WOL consortium and the Centre for Neglected Tropical Diseases and former president of the British Society for Parasitology. Mark obtained his PhD in Parasite Immunology from the University of Keele.

He joined the Wellcome Centre for Research in Parasitic Infections at Imperial College to work on molecular vaccines for onchocerciasis where he was awarded Fellowships from the MRC and Wellcome Trust. He moved to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine where he developed his own independent research group through Career Development and Senior Fellowship support from the Wellcome Trust.

His area of interest is the filarial nematode diseases of humans, which include elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis) and river blindness (onchocerciasis): two of the leading causes of global disability. His research has focused on the role of Wolbachia-bacterial endosymbionts, as drivers of inflammatory disease and targets for antibiotic therapy. The A-WOL consortium aims to discover and develop new anti-Wolbachia drugs for filarial disease.

He is a recipient of the Wright Medal from the British Society for Parasitology.